Slide Show - Images (mostly) from The Illustrated History of Painting

Friday, March 18, 2011

WILLY - PRINCE or SYMBOLIC PARASITE?

Prince William is in town today and has had the usual celebrity-ghoul's tour of downtown Christchurch - complete with multi-person official entourage and security escort.

Inner city businessmen haven't been allowed inside the cordon to fetch essentials (before their buildings are bowled in non-notified scenarios) due to what city fathers say are logistical and resource shortages...but there's plenty of manpower to usher wee Will about for camera ready news shots.

Speaking of resource allocation in a civic emergency....A massive stage and mega-screen television have been built in Hagley park. An elaborate sound system and crowd control plan organized .... while just yesterday I saw people still picking up chemical toilets at a city service center and shoveling silt around their sections.

In twice hard hit neighborhoods such as Avonside homeowners still don't know if the land beneath their wrecked, unlivable homes will be remediated or ? .... while they watch their accomodation-insurance-payment -clocks tick inexorably toward the eleventh hour.

Today all swells, politicians, celebrities, royalty will pace the boards of the public stage and along with sanctimonious clergymen - intone platitudes, civic-congratulation, sentiment and oratorical resolve.

The cathedral will be rebuilt,they will proclaim. We have 4.1 million grant from the government for turf renewal at the stadium, Christchurch will rise form the ashes - they will say.

Meanwhile homeowners and business people still cannot get a resource consent (for property rebuilds) through the micromanaging-death-grip council building approval process......and this FROM THE FIRST EARTHQUAKE.

Tonight a state subsidized Prince will be wined and dined on NZ taxpayer dollars - the table will groan with the weight of fine food and wine, self-congratulatory grins will be pasted on the party's favored faces...while somewhere in Aranui dirty faced kids will be eating reheated chips and cheerios while their parents comb the job-classifieds for work to replace their earthquake-eliminated former employment.

If the above paragraph sounds something like the 14th century you wouldn't be far off imagining the comparison.

Don't get me wrong - I'm grateful for the holiday it's quiet outside as the roading work in front of my house has stopped and the REAL HEROES of this disaster - TRADESMEN and WOMEN, who have and are still putting essential infrastructure back together in record time, are getting a well deserved day off!!

If anyone should have a place on the Hagley park stage it should be the anonymous hollow-eyed (from lack of rest) working men and women of Canterbury as opposed to the fat arsed politicians, clergy and other talking heads who've filled our television screens for what seems like months.

May I suggest that we all stay home today, turn off the yapping telly, and raise a glass to the working people of Canterbury - the everyday folks who have and will continue to selflessly rebuild our city - while talking heads go on talking.......

Lately

Expat American living and working in New Zealand.
I have a long-established painting practice and
occasionally write criticism for Art in America, Sculpture, Art New Zealand and ARTNET - among others.
Where I come from the only people who read visual art criticism and review are the artist ,his dealer and the artist's mother.